Last night our Ooky Spooky, Berri Scary night was a hoot! Our characters put on a great show with costumes and accessories which kept us entertained for hours. We also had a great auction, full of entertainment, bargains and plenty of $$’s for GIVIT.

As we geared up and got ready to leave Berri this morning, it wasn’t Berri Berri cold as we were all suspecting. Most people were enjoying not having to wear 50 layers!

Our ‘DumbleBee’ award recipient today was Stuart Hill from car 55. Yesterday he was waiting at a checkpoint in the passenger seat of his car and someone asked him to move his vehicle forward a little. Stu thought to himself, “You know what I’ll just sit in the passenger seat and put the car in drive.” He did just that. When it come time to stop…. he didn’t, he couldn’t. He run straight up the end of car 17, Normy, Bobbie & Peter. How could you BEE so stupid?! Road Boss, as he does, enjoys a gag or two and on announcing Stu his ‘DumbleBee’ award, Road Boss organised for the boys from car 17 to walk into the room wrapped in head bandages and neck braces. A good laugh was had by all.​‘Via the Mighty Murray’ is the theme of this year’s rally, and Berri was our first good glimpse and taste of this magnificent river and surrounding area. We headed away from this river for today but we will revisit it in the days to come. Today’s rally kilometres included sand and Malley scrub as far as the horizon. It was quite challenging in some places where there was very soft sand. Most vehicles were advised to lower tyre pressures, but if that didn’t work, we had recovery gear ready to go!

As we arrived at Dimboola a large flock of Corellas flew over and between the trees of the Caravan Park, getting themselves ready for their roost along side the river tonight.

We have dinner organised tonight at the Dimboola Rowing Club and our theme is, ‘Kings & Queens of Karaoke’. We’ve had photo evidence of our Rallytives practicing their chosen karaoke songs for tonight. Some have been multitasking, Heather from Car 1959X was showing us footage of KL reading lyrics from her phone, holding her laptop with the music playing and having the Road Book on the dash reading the next instruction. Can’t wait to hear what they’ve been practising!

As the cars were arriving in this afternoon, it looks that they’ve found some muddy tracks in this drought country. They’ve all said it was definitely a different change from the sandy tracks they have been on during the last few days. As the cars and crews were arriving into Dimboola Caravan Park to the admin check in point, we couldn’t help but notice they were covered in thick black soil mud!

Notable vehicle happenings for today:

Car 58 done a starter motor and had to replace it on the side of the road, he fixed it and is in Dimboola tonight.